Foundation raising in Kirkland WA - your house lifted and set on new concrete

You're probably here because the old foundation is giving out or you want the house sitting higher, and the first thing to settle is whether your house suits a lift. The price moves with the size and shape of the house, what's attached to it and how much new foundation goes under it, while the schedule turns on the inspection, any permit review and how your lot sits. I give you your own price at the estimate, after I've looked at the house and the lot in person.

Before any lift, I want a design professional to look your house over, because I won't put jacks under a house nobody has checked. Then I walk the house with you and we go over any attached garage, porch or chimney, since each one changes how the lift gets planned. We also sit down together and plan for the stretch when your utilities are off, so you can sort out where you'll stay well ahead of time. Only then does the house come up, and once the new or extended foundation is built beneath it, we set the house down and the lines go back on. The inspection and the planning are the first things people want to trim to save money, and I'd rather lose the job than skip them, because nobody can fix a bad plan once the house is in the air.

Freeing the house sometimes means sawing through concrete poured against the old foundation, like a stoop or a slab, and our concrete cutting work makes those cuts so the rest stays whole. If the house sits at a different level afterward, the driveway may not meet the garage the way it used to, so we also take on concrete driveway building to tie it back in.

In Kirkland the lot can matter as much as the house, because the city's permit exemptions don't apply on land in a flood hazard area, a wetland, a steep slope or another critical area. The city also says what a permit takes there, including the paperwork, the fees and how long review runs, depends on the size of the job and the kind of critical area on or near your property. So before we plan a lift, we look at where your lot sits, and when the job needs a permit, I tell you at the estimate and we take care of the application with the city or county, or walk you through it, so you know where it stands.

The ground itself is the other thing we check, since the city flags land that's prone to landslides, severe erosion or soils that can liquefy in an earthquake, and its Landslide Hazard Map is a good place to start. We're based in Kirkland and work across the cities around it, inside city limits and out in the county areas too, and we look at the ground the same way on jobs in Bellevue and Redmond.